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Possibly the weirdest planet yet discovered?

Newfound world 2M1510 (AB) b appears to orbit not one but two stars...and they are actually failed stars, known as brown dwarfs...and the planet orbits sideways, in a unique up-and-down polar orbit.

eso.org/public/news/eso2508/ #space #science #astronomy #nature

Left: This image, taken in visible light, shows 2M1510 AB, a pair of brown dwarfs orbiting each other. The two brown dwarfs, A and B, are seen as a single source in this image, but we know there are two of them because they periodically eclipse each other. When monitoring their orbits, astronomers found perturbations that can only be explained by the gravitational tug of an exoplanet circling both brown dwarfs in a perpendicular orbit. This system contains a third brown dwarf, 2M1510 C, which is located too far away to be responsible for these perturbations. Right: This is an artist’s impression of the exoplanet 2M1510 (AB) b’s unusual orbit around its host stars, a pair of brown dwarfs. The newly discovered planet has a polar orbit, which is perpendicular to the plane in which the two stars are traveling.

"Big surprise": astronomers find planet in perpendicular orbit around pair of stars

Astronomers have found a planet that orbits at an angle of 90 degrees around a rare pair of peculiar stars. This is the first time we have strong evidence for one of these ‘polar planets’ orbiting a stellar pair.
www.eso.org
#science #nature #astronomy #space

reshared this

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Free Blue Screens of Death for Windows 11 24H2 users

Microsoft rewards those who patch early with bricks hurled through its operating system Keeping with its rich history of updates that break Windows in unexpected ways, Microsoft has warned that two recent patches for Windows 11 24H2 are triggering blue screen crashes.…
#theregister #IT
go.theregister.com/feed/www.th…


Free Blue Screens of Death for Windows 11 24H2 users

: Microsoft rewards those who patch early with bricks hurled through its operating system
Brandon Vigliarolo (The Register)
#IT #theregister

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For those who are interested in free-threaded Python (peps.python.org/pep-0703/), a few of us working on it, and more importantly porting libraries to work with it, have set up a new Discord server, for folks to ask questions a bit more interactively. (Lurking is also welcome! It's amazing how much you learn by osmosis.)

discord.gg/rqgHCDqdRr

#Python #PythonDevelopment


PEP 703 – Making the Global Interpreter Lock Optional in CPython | peps.python.org

CPython’s global interpreter lock (“GIL”) prevents multiple threads from executing Python code at the same time. The GIL is an obstacle to using multi-core CPUs from Python efficiently.
Python Enhancement Proposals (PEPs)
#python #pythondevelopment

mastodon - Link to source

Before you plug in your new Timex/Sinclair 1000, please take a moment to think about this exciting new adventure. We want to assure you that:

1. You will enjoy computing.

2. You will find it easy as well as enjoyable.

3. You shouldn’t be afraid of the computer. You are smarter than it is. So is your parakeet, for that matter.

4. You will make mistakes as you learn. The computer will not laugh at you.

5. Your mistakes will not do any harm to the computer. You can’t break it by pushing the “wrong” button.

6. You are about to take a giant step into the future. Everyone will soon be using computers in every part of their daily lives, and you will have a head start.

-- Steve Vickers, Timex/Sinclair 1000 Instruction Manual (aka the US ZX81 manual)

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1/2 - TrueFans now allows you to export your podcast activity in the W3C ActivityStreams 2.0 format.

We use the AS2.0 structure - Actor, Verb, Object format. e.g Sam (Actor), Plays (Verb), Podnews Weekly (Object). plus attributes Listen Time, Percent Completed, Value Paid.

We enable users to auto publish their activity to X, ActivityPub, BlueSky, Threads and Linkedin.

We allow Creators to do the same.

w3.org/TR/activitystreams-core…

/cc @evan @chris @dave

Activity Streams 2.0

www.w3.org
@Dave @Evan Prodromou @Chris Messina

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Folks having a rough day today, please enjoy this pic I got yesterday of my neighbor’s dog, Hazel, who is tiny and adorable and squeaks and weighs approximately 1.2 puffles (a unit of Floof Metrics), and loses every last scrap of her composure when she sees me coming, which is honestly the best reason to make friends with dogs, I tell you.
A very small brown teacup terrier is sitting on a porch, with a little tiny blep of tongue sticking out.

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While we are waiting for the recordings from #fossnorth to show up, you can browse the slides from my talk "What comes after world domination?" that I did Monday morning.

slideshare.net/slideshow/what-…

What these slides don't show, is how my laptop died in the middle of my presentation so I had to reboot to get back into the game and continue... maybe not my greatest moment.


What comes after world domination with Daniel Stenberg, April 2025

What comes after world domination with Daniel Stenberg, April 2025 - Download as a PDF or view online for free
SlideShare
#fossnorth

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Hacking Accessible Pedestrian Signals is Not a Joke: It’s a Civil Rights Violation Audible signals are a critical safety tool for Blind pedestrians and advocacy is why we have them lflegal.com/2025/04/aps-hack/

Hacking Accessible Pedestrian Signals is Not a Joke: It's a Civil Rights Violation

On April 12, 2025 the top story on the Palo Alto (California) online news site was "Silicon Valley Crosswalk Buttons Apparently Hacked to Imitate Musk, Zuckerberg Voices" It told the story, covered by other media too, of how someone hacked into audi…
Law Office of Lainey Feingold

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When Imperfect Systems are Good, Actually: Bluesky's Lossy Timelines

jazco.dev/2025/02/19/imperfect…

When Imperfect Systems are Good, Actually: Bluesky’s Lossy Timelines

By examining the limits of reasonable user behavior and embracing imperfection for users who go beyond it, we can continue to provide service that meets the expectations of users without sacrificing scalability of the system.
Jaz (Jaz’s Blog)

mastodon - Link to source
"We believe the Trump administration violated the First Amendment by attempting to shut down our operations simply because they disagreed with our independent journalism. They saw our reporting as not aligned with their political agenda." - VOA's Patsy Widakuswara, lead plaintiff in one of the lawsuits filed against USAGM's Kari Lake. foreignpress.org/foreign-corre…

Patsy Widakuswara and the Struggle to Save VOA: "Trump Wants to Dismantle Us"

Inside the legal, political, and personal battle for press freedom in America.
Alex Segura Lozano (FOREIGN PRESS)

mastodon - Link to source

The W3C “Accessibility of machine learning and generative AI” draft doc continues to get updates, which is good.
w3c.github.io/ai-accessibility…

So far the 3 issues I filed (disambiguate ‘AI’, replace overlays section, discuss sustainability) have no action — but it is early and those were recent.
github.com/w3c/ai-accessibilit…


Issues · w3c/ai-accessibility

https://w3c.github.io/ai-accessibility/. Contribute to w3c/ai-accessibility development by creating an account on GitHub.
GitHub

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AARP, Amazon, Google, and Walmart Support Launch of New Initiative to Combat Elder Fraud press.aarp.org/2025-04-16-AARP…

AARP, Amazon, Google, and Walmart Support Launch of New Initiative to Combat Elder Fraud

First-Ever National Elder Fraud Coordination Center Brings Together Private and Public Sectors to Seek Justice for Victims WASHINGTON, April 16, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, AARP, Amazon, Google,...
MediaRoom

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Sources: the Trump administration plans to eliminate the IRS' free Direct File tax program, after IRS staff were told in mid-March to stop working on it (Fatima Hussein/Associated Press)

apnews.com/article/irs-direct-…
techmeme.com/250416/p44#a25041…


Trump administration plans to end IRS free tax filing program, sources say

The Trump administration plans to eliminate the IRS’ Direct File program. That's the electronic system for filing tax returns directly to the agency for free.
Fatima Hussein (AP News)

mastodon - Link to source

Yesterday, the P’urhépecha municipality of Cherán, Michoacán, celebrated 14 years of autonomy. It began on April 15, 2011, when a group of women blocked cartel-linked illegal loggers from removing trees from the community. This act sparked a mass uprising that saw the community reclaim its territory, establishing barricades, 179 permanent bonfires, a form of autonomous government rooted in P’urhépecha forms of communal organization, and expelling the cartels, police, and political parties.

If you want to know more about Cherán, might I suggest "The Bonfires of Autonomy," a piece I wrote for the anthology edited by @cbmilstein, "Deciding for Ourselves: The Promise of Direct Democracy:" akpress.org/deciding-for-ourse…

desinformemonos.org/celebra-ch…

#Mexico #Michoacán #Indigenous #autonomy


Deciding For Ourselves

This anthology explores this “sense of freedom in the air,” as one piece puts it, by looking at contemporary examples of autonomous, directly democratic spaces and the real-world dilemmas they experience, all the while underscoring the egalitarian…

www.akpress.org
#indigenous #Autonomy #méxico #michoacan @Cindy Milstein (they)

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#AndroidAppRain at apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid today with 15 updated and 2 added apps:

+ AstraCrypt: hide and encrypt your files with modern security standards 🛡️
+ Mint: a lightweight Misskey Android client (in early development state) 🛡️

3 apps have been removed as they were reported broken:

- Kuroba
- Tappic
- moVirt

1 app moved to a new packageId 1 month ago, so the old one was removed today:

* Dharmik

Enjoy your #free #Android #apps with the #IzzyOnDroid repo :awesome:


IzzyOnDroid F-Droid Repository

This is a repository of apps to be used with your F-Droid client. Applications in this repository are official binaries built by the original application developers, taken from their resp. repositories (mostly Github, GitLab, Codeberg).
IzzyOnDroid App Repo
#android #free #apps #AndroidAppRain #izzyondroid

mastodon - Link to source

Whistleblower reveals evidence on how Elon Musk's DOGE team extracted 10 GB of sensitive data about American citizens from a government agency, and then deleted accounts and logs to cover their tracks.

Then, when the whistleblower tried to report the data breach, he received a threatening letter containing pictures taken from a drone watching him walking his dog.

npr.org/2025/04/15/nx-s1-53558…

This entry was edited (8 months ago)

mastodon - Link to source

digitalcourage.de/db-tracking

DB #SchnüffelNavigator

Die Bahn-App „#DBNavigator” ist voll mit #Trackern, die uns überwachen. #Digitalcourage klagt dagegen. Denn wir wollen Bahn fahren – nicht Daten liefern.

Gemeinsam haben wir Ende April die Bahn dazu aufgefordert, die Mängel zu entfernen. Dafür hatten wir der #DB eine Frist von zwei Monaten eingeräumt. Doch die Bahn hat in ihrer Antwort klargemacht, dass sie nicht vorhat, etwas Wesentliches zu ändern. Am 20. Oktober 2022 haben wir deshalb unsere Klage eingereicht. Die Bahn hat mittlerweile ihre Klageerwiderung eingereicht, auf die wir geantwortet haben. Der nächste Schritt bei unserer Klage wird die Verhandlung sein, ein Termin wurde noch nicht bekannt gegeben.

Hier unsere ganze Klageschrift lesen.

https://digitalcourage.de/db-tracking

DB Schnüffel-Navigator | Digitalcourage

Die Bahn-App „DB Navigator” ist voll mit Trackern, die uns überwachen. Digitalcourage klagt dagegen. Denn wir wollen Bahn fahren – nicht Daten liefern
digitalcourage.de
#trackern #digitalcourage #db #schnuffelnavigator #DBNavigator

mastodon - Link to source

The trajectory of E2E-encryption is about de-platforming: There shall be no central machines that can control the edges/peers, and the social groups and virtual centers they freely form.

Our #deltachat R&D around #chatmail relays and #webxdc apps all aim to realize such a "zero-platforms" fully E2E-encrypted interaction model. However, this is *not* just about cryptographic cleverness. Rather it is about usable anti-authoritarian designs, as explicitly stated in January delta.chat/en/2025-01-23-webxd…


Delta Chat: Replacing billionairish platforms with ZIP files

How can we evolve and deploy web apps without allowing developers or operators to become a “billionaire in the middle”? There are many ways to try to address this challenge and some involve the tec...
delta.chat
#deltachat #Webxdc #chatmail
This entry was edited (8 months ago)
in reply to kurtz

mastodon - Link to source

Delta Chat (39c3)

agreed. We are aware of the importance of voice calls and there are various background efforts around designing and realizing them. If there are developer experienced folks out there who want to help, DM us. Or someone with a bunch of money. We have experts in our community which we can't contract because of a lack of money, and so they rather work in corporate environments for the time being.

mastodon - Link to source

As I announced earlier today @RezzaBuh and I are going on an #evtrip. Goal: pick up an Audi Q4 e-tron 35 I've purchased in Bavaria. We're staying in an B&B near the border over night. We use an EV on the way there, too. The only charging stop is in 311km. Once we get there, the car should have 19% of battery left.

(if you don't want to follow this thread, just mute #evtrip)

A photo of a car dashboard showing a map with the trip.
#evtrip @Jaroslav "Řezza" Řezník
in reply to Jiří Eischmann

mastodon - Link to source

Jiří Eischmann

We arrived at the supercharger in Pilsen with 24% of battery left. We were speeding 130km/h where we could and the average consumption was still 17.4 kWh/100km. Now we need to charge it for 10 minutes to reach Rozvadov, but we'll probably stay a bit longer to have extra energy for tomorrow.

The downside is that the supercharger in Pilsen is on a hotel parking lot 7km off the highway with no services around, just the hotel.
#evtrip

A Tesla Model Y 2025 at a supercharger.
#evtrip
This entry was edited (8 months ago)
in reply to Jiří Eischmann

mastodon - Link to source

Jiří Eischmann

And we've arrived to Svata Katerina, the last settlement before the border. Here the day ends for us. There will definitely be more fun tomorrow. We will have to deal with the German authorities and none of us speaks German. And E-tron 35 has a considerably shorter range than today's car and I won't use the built-in navigation, so the trip back home will be a bit of an adventure. #evtrip
#evtrip
in reply to Jiří Eischmann

mastodon - Link to source

Jiří Eischmann

The infotainment was a bit of a letdown. We couldn't quite get Android Auto working. Not sure if it isn't included in the package or what. Setting up MyAudi was also quite confusing. I'll have to look into it once I have time home. For this trip I'm using Sygic for EV navigation.
Charging power at the supercharger was only 35 kW. Not sure if it was because the battery was at 60% or there is some compatibility issue.
Next stop: Ionity Beroun, 170km
#evtrip
#evtrip
in reply to Jiří Eischmann

mastodon - Link to source

Jiří Eischmann

Arrived to Ionity Beroun, another 170 km, the battery down from 80 to 20%, let's get back to 80% and continue. The biggest problem at the moment are several traffic jams along the way.

Ioinity started charging 105 kW which is close to the car maximum. Also the biggest price: 21 CZK (€0.8)/kWh if you don't have a plan. This ride will be more expensive than with gasoline. #evtrip

A screenshot of the Ionity website showing charging stats. The power output says 101.69 kW.
#evtrip
in reply to JamesHeather

mastodon - Link to source

Jiří Eischmann

@JamesHeather To je. S touto cenou a průměrnou spotřebou na dálnici vychází 100 km na 310 Kč. U benzínu by mě to samé stálo cca 250 Kč. Je to ale cena extrémní, kdy člověk dojede k výkonné nabíječce bez předchozí registrace. S ní je ta cena někde na 12 Kč. Doma ze sítě člověk nabíjí za 5 Kč a u elektřiny ze solárů mě vychází kWh v nákladech ušlé příležitosti 1,25 Kč. Počítám, že z 95 % budeme nabíjet doma, takže průměrná cena pro nás bude hluboko pod 100 Kč na 100 km.
@JamesHeather
in reply to Jiří Eischmann

mastodon - Link to source

Jaroslav "Řezza" Řezník

our goal was to spend as much battery as possible to have time for breakfast. German autobahns are great when you have such a goal 😉. On the other hand we had a lot of time to get to the destination on time. Hence from almost fastest car (overtaking police car driving 160 kmh would cause me a lot of troubles at home) to still not the slowest. Even thought there was no limit, almost everyone drove the same at around 115 kmh.
in reply to Jiří Eischmann

mastodon - Link to source

Jaroslav "Řezza" Řezník

we would have reached Rozvadov without charging. I set charge at destination to 30 % at destination. So ten minutes wasn't to reach but to reach with 30 %. And the consumption is surprisingly nice. This is my first drive with the (semi)new Model Y (with less than around 700 km driven - registered only on Monday) and it's about 15 percent more efficient than my old Model Y. However, it's on beautiful but inefficient 20" Induction wheels.

mastodon - Link to source

A strong Europe rolls on at high speed.

Efficient EU train services offer clean and smart alternatives to travel.

This is why we want to bridge gaps in the EU's rail network with a new high-speed rail plan.

Tomorrow, we'll kick-start new discussions with stakeholders to improve infrastructure, passenger services, and the rail industry.

We're also working on single digital booking and ticketing rules to make travelling easier.

Ready to hop on?

More: europa.eu/!nvqbGc

#EU

Digital painting of a blue and white high-speed train on tracks angled diagonally across the frame. The background features a watercolour-style depiction of the EU flag with yellow stars on a blue base. Text reads "Europe rolls on at high speed" and the EU logo is in the bottom right corner.

Implementation dialogue: high-speed rail in Europe

European Commissioner for Sustainable Transport and Tourism, Apostolos Tzitzikostas, will host an Implementation dialogue concerning high-speed rail in Europe on 15 April in Brussels.
Mobility and Transport
#EU

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🌍 RIPE 90 is happening 12–16 May in Lisbon, Portugal (and online)! Whether you're a network operator, researcher, or Internet enthusiast, this is where the community comes together to share, shape policy, and connect: ripe90.ripe.net/
Banner promoting RIPE 90. In the background is Lisbon’s Praça do Comércio with the statue of King José I. In the foreground, a yellow overlay reads: “Join us at RIPE 90 – Lisbon, Portugal – 12–16 May 2025” with the URL “ripe90.ripe.net”.

RIPE 90 – Lisbon, Portugal | 12-16 May 2025

A RIPE Meeting is a five-day event where Internet Service Providers (ISPs), network operators and other interested parties from all over the world gather.
ripe90.ripe.net

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#Conversations_im has the ability to fetch outage status information from an independent server and display that in case the regular #XMPP server can not be reached.

This is powered by XEP-0455 (xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0455.h…).
TLDR: Server gives client a URL to a JSON file during normal connects, client will hold on to that URL and fetch the JSON file in case server is unreachable.

Service Outage Status

This document defines an XMPP protocol extension that enables server administrators to communicate issues with the server to all users in a semantic manner.
Mathieu Pasquet
#xmpp #conversations_im
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